On Eagles Wings Ministries

ASHEVILLE CITIZENS TIMES AUG 9, 2008

– Emily Fitchpatrick hopes her personal journey will help her draw frightened victims away from their own troubles.

Having recovered from alcohol and drug addiction nine years ago, Fitchpatrick said she believes God can help her rescue women who have fallen prey to sex trafficking.

The crimes have gotten national attention, Fitchpatrick said, but little notice locally.

“People think this (sex trafficking) happens in other countries, and they don’t want to see that it happens here,” said Fitchpatrick, 30, the director of the Hope House project, a planned home that would provide long-term care for victims.

Hope House

Fitchpatrick, who recently left a job as program coordinator at the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove to spend more time with her two young children, is raising money to buy a house for long-term counseling, job training and spiritual restoration for women and girls.

Fitchpatrick and other members of her group, On Eagle’s Wings Ministries, have crafted a business plan for the project, which they’ve named the Hope House.

They have consulted with a security company, a licensed counselor, an attorney and national trafficking experts.

Fitchpatrick envisions a place of peace where victims from across the country would stay for 12 months as they try to rebuild their lives.

Only a few groups in North Carolina are equipped to help trafficking victims, including World Relief in High Point ,an international aid organization.

Fitchpatrick said she would rely mostly on churches and private donors to raise the more than $500,000 needed to get the project under way.

She is joining with groups including the Carolina Women’s Center at UNC Chapel Hill, which works to raise awareness about sex trafficking.

Center director Donna Bickford said trafficking victims’ needs are not met at conventional women’s shelters or other places designed for short-term stays.

Government agencies can help foreign victims obtain a visa and other legal help, but their personal well-being is often left up to a handful of nonprofit groups, Bickford said.

Legal Aid of North Carolina recently received a $281,000 federal grant to support domestic violence shelters and others that provide services for victims. A representative from the group will attend a benefit for the Hope House on Sunday.

Proving a need

Anywhere from 14,500 to 17,500 people are brought into the country for forced labor or sex every year, primarily from East Asia, Mexico and Central America, according to estimates in a 2006 State Department report.

Enticed with promises of work or money, victims find themselves in unfamiliar places, threatened with harm by their captors if they try to escape.

“It’s like if we took you to Venezuela and locked you in a house, what choices would you have? If you got out the door, you wouldn’t know where to go or who to call,” said John Price, civil rights agent with the FBI in Charlotte.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office convicted two Mexican nationals in recent months on charges they were operating a sex trafficking ring in South Carolina and North Carolina. Price said he is not aware of any other trafficking convictions on the state or federal level.

Asheville Cases

Police investigated two suspected sex trafficking operations last year. In one of the cases, a man contacted detectives in March 2007 and said his niece had been brought to Asheville from Mexico and forced into prostitution. When the girl escaped, she said her captors made her and another girl serve alcohol and perform sex acts with male patrons at a now-shuttered billiards hall on Haywood Road in West Asheville, police said. She and her uncle disappeared when police started investigating, said Asheville Police Officer Tammy Bryson, who worked on the case. The alleged traffickers also fled the area by the time police mounted an extensive investigation.

Officers in November 2007 also discovered an abandoned Emma Road trailer near the city-county line in which a woman and young girl reportedly were forced to have sex with numerous customers, Bryson said.

A woman reported the operation to police after she found out her husband had been there.

The girl and woman would not discuss what happened, though the man who operated it admitted they were being prostituted, police said.

Immigration Customs Enforcement deported the man and the girl because they didn’t have enough evidence for criminal charges, Bryson said. The woman, who was a U.S. citizen, disappeared.

“It breaks my heart to think there are young girls out there who need our help, but we can’t help them because we don’t know where they’re at,” Bryson said.

Raising awareness

The first step toward helping trafficking victims is to find them.

Karen Arias works with the Latino communities of Haywood and Jackson counties as a court victim advocate, offering legal help to immigrants, especially domestic violence victims.

Only one person has told her she suspected a family member was trafficked. She is trying to build trust with people in the immigrant community, whom may be afraid to speak out.

When Arias talks to women at the Jackson County Health Department about various health concerns, she tries to ask subtle questions to determine if they might be victims of abuse or if they are being held against their will.

One of her goals, both for the community and among possible victims, is to remove the stigma of the sex trade so the women can be seen for what they really are.

Fitchpatrick said she thinks many women whom society despises as prostitutes may in fact be victims of sex slavery.

“We can’t just view this person as, ‘Oh, that’s just a prostitute.’ I want people to view them as they are a person,” Fitchpatrick said.

Biblical Recorder,

Sept 4, 2009

She might be the lone young girl standing like a rock in a stream of teenagers flowing around her at the mall; or a waitress with cigarette burns and bruises; or a dancer in a club nice people avoid.

In America where 300,000 young people each year are trapped as pawns in a seeping sex trade, chances are you have seen a girl who is economically and psychologically enslaved to a man who rents her out as income property — you just didn’t recognize it.

In Asheville Emily Fitchpatrick took note of those young people around her and heeded a distinct call from God to begin “On Eagles Wings Ministries" an organization whose goal is to find, befriend and rescue girls caught in human trafficking.

In an interview in her apartment with staff member Kim Kern and volunteer Dee Schronce, Fitchpatrick shared tragic stories and bewildering statistics about the prevalence of human trafficking in the United States

The U.S. Department of Justice says the average entry age into prostitution is 12-14 and that often the child is prostituted by a drug addicted parent. They tell of police finding a 12-year-old in the back seat of a car with a john, while mom was in front with needle in her arm.

Experts say that within 48 hours of a teenager running away, she will be approached by a sharp eyed pimp, just about the time she is hungry and tired enough to be desperate for a “friend.”

These girls fall to the mercy of whoever finds them. There is no count of how many such girls never return home and die on the street because many of their families are consumed with their own problems, and the girl is never missed.

Beneath the floor boards these girls fall through is “a whole predatory arena waiting for them,” according to Schronce, who herself was embraced by predators when she fell through the cracks at age 17.

“Very few people will ever come out and talk about it,” said Schronce, author of a book about her experiences in human trafficking called Mary and Me: From Ruin to Royalty. She is talking now to bring awareness to the tragedy she sees all around her, but that is little discussed  because too often people see trafficking as a victimless crime.

Police haul the girl to jail and tell the man to go home to his wife.

There are brothels everywhere, the On Eagles Wings team says. In Ohio a father found his runaway daughter a year later, in a brothel in the very neighborhood from which she’d run.

On Eagles Wings volunteers reach out to girls in North and South Carolina Among other things, they take gift bags with bath and body products to strip club dancers.

“I can’t believe a Christian would come here and do this,” said one dancer when presented with a gift and a friendly smile. “Don’t you think I’m awful?”

Volunteers withhold judgment. Their goal is rescue. A quarterly newsletter to juvenile detention centers is geared toward helping girls see themselves as victims and not just an unlucky soul who fell accidentally into a difficult life.

Often they see their pimps as boyfriends, as if the pimp actually cared about them.

One of the On Eagles Wings ministries is Hope House, a long-term residence in an undisclosed rural location near Asheville. Staff seeks a one-year commitment from girls who come there, a length of time necessary to “deprogram” girls from accepting their lives as objects. Tragically, girls who have been taught their personal worth is only sexual, often return to that life, even though it is filled with danger and pain.

“Hope House is faith based,” said its director, Kern. “There is no true healing without Jesus Christ. So that’s going to be the biggest part of the ministry.”

There is very limited space in the U.S. for sex trafficking victims, fewer than 50 beds for minors, according to Fitchpatrick. Of those, only Hope House is faith based.

So far their only fund raising has been prayer. They take no government grants so their faith basis can be out in the open and central to their work.

Radio Interview with Matt & Carol 106.9 The Light

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We are excited to announce that we have been selected  by the WNC Crime Victims Coalition to receive an award for providing outstanding service to victims of crime.